Glorifying Brother Ass: The Stigmata of Saint Francis
On 14 September 2024, we commemorated the octacentennial of St. Francis’s reception of the Stigmata. It is thus a particularly fitting time to ask what it was that God, in his generosity and in his providence, was doing in allowing il poverino, the poor man of Assisi, to share in his wounds.
Brother Ass
Given the title of this paper, perhaps we should begin by asking, who is brother ass? As we hear in the Legenda Maior, the biography of St. Francis written by St. Bonaventure, the fifth master of the order, “brother ass” is how Francis referred to his own body:
Francis taught the Brothers zealously to shun sloth, as the sink of all evil thoughts, showing by his example that the rebellious and idle body must be subdued by unceasing discipline and profitable toil. Wherefore he would call his body “brother ass,” as though it were meet to be loaded with toilsome burdens, beaten with many stripes, and nourished on mean fare. (V.6)
The point here is not to denigrate the value of the body, or its place as something integral to the human person. As St. John Paul II said, “we are our bodies.” And yet, our physicality is a sort of poverty. C.S. Lewis expresses well what Francis had in mind: In the Four Loves, he writes:
First there is that of those ascetic Pagans who called [the body] the prison or the “tomb” of the soul, and [others] to whom it was a “sack of dung,” food for worms, filthy, shameful, a source of nothing but temptation to bad men and humiliation to good ones. Then there are the Neo-Pagans, the nudists and the sufferers from Dark Gods, to whom the body is glorious. But thirdly we have the view which St. Francis expressed by calling his body “Brother Ass.” . . . All three may be . . . defensible; but give me St. Francis for my money. . . . Ass is exquisitely right because no one in his senses can either revere or hate a donkey. It is a useful, sturdy, lazy, obstinate, patient, lovable and infuriating beast; deserving now a stick and now a carrot; both pathetically and absurdly beautiful. So the body. (The Four Loves, 93)
In receiving the stigmata, Francis’s body is pierced and wounded. This is an event which demands reflection. How it is that this seeming destruction of the body is actually the moment of its (and our) glorification? In Francis, we will come to see that this “lovable and infuriating beast,” this least noble aspect of ourselves, is an indispensable source of a likeness to and union with Christ our beloved.
The Stigmata
Let us begin by taking a moment to recount St. Francis’s reception of the stigmata. On the 14th of September in the year 1224, two years before the end of his life, and some seventeen years since he first embraced a life of radical poverty and fraternity, St. Francis went to pray in a hermitage on Mount Alverna. Thomas of Celano, in his vita prima, tells the story in this way:
When he was staying in a hermitage, called Alverna from the place where it stood, two years before he gave his soul back to heaven, he had a vision from God. There appeared to him a man, like a Seraph with six wings, standing above him, with his hands extended and feet joined, fixed to a cross. Two wings were raised above his head, two were extended for flight and two covered his whole body.
When the blessed servant of the most High saw these things, he was filled with the greatest wonder but he did not understand what this was supposed to mean to him. Still he rejoiced very much, and was exceedingly happy because of the kind and gracious look with which the Seraph looked at him, whose beauty was beyond estimation, but at the same time he was frightened in seeing him fixed to the cross in the bitter pain of suffering. Francis arose, if I may say so, sad and happy, such that joy and grief alternated in him. He anxiously meditated on what the vision could mean, and for this reason his spirit was greatly troubled.
While he was unable to come to any understanding of it and his heart was entirely preoccupied with it, this is what happened: the marks of the nails began to appear in his hands and feet just as he had seen them before in the crucified man above him.
His hands and his feet appeared to be pierced in the center by nails, whose heads were visible on the inner side of his hands and on the upper part of his feet, while the pointed ends protruded from the opposite sides. The marks on his hands were round on the inner side and elongated on the outer, and small pieces of flesh looked like the ends of the nails, bent and beaten back and rising above the rest of the flesh. In the same way the marks of the nails were impressed on his feet, and raised above the rest of the flesh. His right side was also pierced as if with a lance, and covered over with a scar, and it often bled, and his tunic and his undergarments were often sprinkled with his sacred blood. (VP, §§94–95, pp. 277–78)
Though it may be a bit of an aside, we must briefly address the identity of the seraph, which always seems to cause some confusion. In this account, the “man, like a Seraph with six wings,” is not named as Christ, but his identity is clear. Latter, in St. Bonaventure’s telling of the scene, this identification is made explicit: “Francis rejoiced because of the gracious way Christ looked upon him under the appearance of the Seraph.” There is an echo here of the divine theophanies in the Old Testament, where God and the angel of God are almost interchangeable. So also here, the seraphim, who stand in assembly around Christ, communicate to Francis Him who was crucified. As Arnold Davidson notes, just as we apprehend Christ in the Eucharist sub specie, that is, under the appearance of bread and wine, so, according to Bonaventure, Francis encounters Christ sub specie, that is, under the appearance of a seraphim.
Francis’s reception of Christ’s wounds comes as a result of this encounter. He does not, however, receive the wounds in the moment of the vision itself, but only afterwards in contemplation when “his heart was entirely preoccupied” with what he had seen. Bonaventure takes note of this, and in The Mind’s Road to God, he says that the Christ “so absorbed the mind of Francis that his soul was manifest in his flesh” (3). Said differently, the conformity of St. Francis’s mind to the crucified Lord led also to the conformity of his flesh to the crucified.
This is a truthful account—I make it a habit not to disagree with doctors of the Church like Bonaventure—but the role of the body in this telling might sound like something of an afterthought. It is the mind in its contemplation of God that is the real source of union. The body seems, almost accidentally, to share in the union first achieved elsewhere. It is not the occasion of such a union. Now, I do not wish to deny this connection between contemplation and the transformation of Francis’s body, but I wonder if we might view the stigmata not at the culmination of the contemplative life but as the culmination of something else, something, like the stigmata itself, which Is particular to Francis, namely, his life of radical poverty.
These two elements of Francis’s life—the stigmata and the particular reason in which Francis chose to embrace poverty—are unique to him. Francis is the first person in the Tradition to receive the gift of bearing Christ’s wounds. (The suggestive phrase in Gal 6:17 is best interpreted otherwise—ἐγὼ γὰρ τὰ στίγματα τοῦ Ἰησοῦ ἐν τῷ σώματί μου βαστάζω.) It is, by all accounts, peculiar to him. And so, on October 3, 1226, in a letter announcing the death of St. Francis, we see Brother Elias write the following:
And now I announce to you a great joy, a new miracle. The world has never heard of such a miracle, except in the Son of God, who is Christ our Lord. A little while before his death, our brother and father appeared crucified, bearing in his body the five wounds, which are truly the stigmata of Christ. His hands and feet were as if punctured by nails, pierced on both sides, and had scars that were the black color of nails. His side appeared pierced by a lance, and often gave forth droplets of blood.
Alongside this, we should note the novelty of Francis’s devotion to Lady Poverty. Francis’s life of radical self-denial was not, as in the case of earlier ascetics, something undertaken merely as a means to train the body. Nor was it instrumental in some other way, as it was for his contemporaries, the Dominicans, for example, for whom it was undertaken to further the task of itinerant preaching. Rather, Francis’s love of poverty was undertaken simply in imitation of Christ his beloved. Lady Poverty, as he called her, was to be loved not for the sake of some other goal, but only so as to draw near to Christ.
In the Paradiso, we can see the link between these novelties—the stigmata and the embrace of poverty. In his crucifixion, Christ undergoes his last and greatest deprivation. And so, in Canto 11, Dante says of Lady Poverty that she “mounted on the cross with Christ.” Said differently, poverty culminates in the crucifixion. And it is this same Lady whom Francis comes to embrace. “She, bereft of her first husband, despised and obscure eleven hundred years and more, remained without a suitor till he came.” As with Christ, so with Francis. The last and greatest deprivation is found on the cross. As Christ’s self-emptying culminates in the crucifixion, so Francis’s unique embrace of poverty culminates in his reception of the stigmata.
What needs to be asked now is just what this conformity to Christ means. We would, I fear, miss the point entirely if the correspondence between Jesus and Francis were understood only as a kind of imitation. There is, of course, a correspondence between the two. As Chesterton quipped, “Jesus was like St. Francis.” And the seal of the Order of Friars Minor suggestively lays the arm of Francis beneath the arm of Christ. In Francis’s mind, in his habit of life, and in his flesh he resembles Jesus. But none of this necessarily moves us beyond the realm of imitation. The question we should ask is why the stigmata is something desirable. I can understand wishing to emulate someone in their glory, but why in their brokenness?
To see what it really means for Francis to bear the wounds of Christ, we should ask first what it means for Christ to bear the wounds of Christ. If we can do that, then we can move from seeing Francis as someone who is like Christ to seeing him as someone who is utterly and completely with Christ.
The Cross and Resurrection
The French priest and theologian F.X. Durrwell has this to say about Christ’s wounds. It is a very difficult text, but it will, I promise, help us towards a better understanding of St. Francis. He writes:
Christ will never leave behind that immolation and that new life; his existence is fixed forever at the moment of the Redemption. The five wounds he showed his disciples are not merely the receipt for a ransom inscribed upon his body, but the wounds of a death from which he will never recover. He did not rise to the life he had before, to this world, to this time; in that sense, he did not rise at all. He dies once for all. The life of glory is a perpetuation of his death.
We are accustomed, I think, to separating Good Friday from Easter Sunday and imagining them as opposites. In one sense, this is perfectly true—we have on one hand the defeat of Christ in death, and on the other his victory in the resurrection. Durrwell, though, invites us to see these in unison. Or, better, he invites us to see the one as the continuation of the other. As he writes, “the life of glory,” which is to say the resurrection, “is a perpetuation of his death.” But what could this mean?
We need to ask ourselves why it is that Christ suffers. The Passion is not a random act of violence. Christ says, “No one takes [my life] from me, but I lay it down of my own accord. I have power to lay it down, and I have power to take it up again” (John 10:18). Jesus loves his own “to the end” (John 13:1), and his Passion is the direct result of God’s drawing near to us. The Passion is the encounter of a relentless and all-embracing Love with the world in all of its brokenness.
An analogy will help here. There was in my parish a girl named Emily. She had some developmental disorders. When walked up to communion she would, involuntarily of course, sometimes flail her arms and even strike her mother. The “Passion” of that mother was not a random act of violence. It was (and still is) the direct result of the mom’s drawing near to Emily. The “Passion” is the encounter of a relentless and all-embracing Love with Emily and her many trials.
So with Christ. The crucifixion is the culmination of his drawing near to us. And the resurrection is the perpetuation of that approach. Easter Sunday is Christ carrying forward the same relentless drawing near that took his life on Friday. A rough analogy may help. Martin Luther King did not choose to die on April 4, 1968. He chose that morning, as on every other, to carry forward the working of teaching us about the dignity of our fellow Americans. Were he to have been restored to life, I think he would have carried on in exactly the same way as before. The resurrection is, of course, not simply a resuscitation, but an emerging through death. All the same, the point stands. Christ is a little like St. Dennis, who is said, after his martyrdom, to have picked up his head and continued to preach.
Christ, in his resurrection, perpetuates the very thing he was doing on Good Friday. As Durrwell says, the life of glory is a perpetuation of his death. He does not “recover” from such wounds in the sense that he moves beyond the very activity that caused them. No, he perpetuates that activity. Christ’s life is fixed forever in that moment, in the total and complete self-emptying for love of neighbor. What it means for Christ to bear his wounds is for him to be relentlessly and lovingly present with the whole of his person to those whom he loves. Simone Weil said that attention is “the rarest and purest form of generosity.” In the resurrection, Christ attends to us with the entirely of his person. He gives the rarest and purest form of generosity to his beloved: his whole and undivided self in the form of gift.
Back to Francis
If this, then, is what is means for Christ to bears his wounds, something similar must be true of St. Francis. There is no possibility that the stigmata was simply the imprinting of physical wounds. It is not an imitation of Christ in any reductively external way. Rather, it is the gathering in of the whole person of Francis—soul and lowly brother ass—into the same work of Christ. It is the drawing of Francis into the perpetual and complete self-emptying love of Christ. As such, the gift of the stigmata creates much more than an external likeness. It generates solidarity and communion. It allows Francis not only to be like Christ, but to be with Christ. And when we see this as true, we see that every moment of suffering, rejection, misunderstanding, and betrayal become, most wonderfully, moments of perfect joy, because they are moments in which Francis can be like and, more importantly, with his beloved.
Let me venture into one last analogy here to make this point clearer. My friend Ian has a son, Cassian. Ian said to me, “Every time we are on a plane and Cassian walks down the aisle, I think ‘What if the emergency door blows off and Cassian is sucked out!’ I think about how I would jump out after him, not because I could save us but only so that he would not have to fall alone.” I know it is extreme, but try and sympathize with it for a minute. The point of Ian jumping out is not to be like his son Cassian, but to be with him—to be with his beloved, so that he is not alone.
I know that Francis did not pray for the stigmata. It was given to him. But if he had, I think he might have done so with the words of the Shakey Graves and Sierra Farrell, “You’re already one of kind; why not make it two.”
And so let me say again: the gift of the stigmata creates much more than an external likeness. It makes Francis not only more perfectly like Christ, but more perfectly with him. It is one of the last and certainly the greatest moment of Francis drawing near to his beloved, and it helps us understand how every moment of suffering, rejection, misunderstanding, and betrayal were received by Francis, most wonderfully, as moments of perfect joy, because they are moments in which Francis can be like and with Christ. Indeed all such moments lived in the flesh, from painful knees to bulging disks to cancerous thyroids, just to name a few closer to home, are, or can be, moments of what Francis calls “perfect joy.”
With this mind, I would like to present my favorite passage from the Fioeretti, the Little Flowers of St. Francis.
The Perfect Joy
On a cold winter’s day, Saint Francis walked with Brother Leo from Perugia to the Porziuncola. Because of their poverty, they suffered much in the cold. At one point, Saint Francis said to Brother Leo: “If God desired that the Friars Minor should serve as a great example of holiness to all people in all lands, please write down that this would not be perfect joy.” At some point later in their journey, Saint Francis said to Brother Leo: “If the Friars Minor could make the lame walk; if we could straighten the crooked; if we could chase away demons; if we could give sight to the blind and speech to the dumb; and even if we could raise the dead after four days, please write down and note carefully that this would not be perfect joy.”
Soon after, Saint Francis said to Brother Leo: “If the Friars Minor could speak every language; if they knew everything about science; if they could explain all the scriptures; if they could predict the future and reveal the secrets of every soul, please write down and note carefully that this would not be perfect joy.” After a few more steps, Saint Francis cried: “Brother Leo, little one of God! If the Friars Minor could sing like angels; if they could explain the movements of the stars; if they knew everything about all animals, birds, fish, plants, stones, trees, and all men, please write down and note carefully that this would not be perfect joy.” Finally, Saint Francis cried again: “Brother Leo, if the Friars Minor could preach and thus convert every person to faith in Christ, please write down and note carefully that even this is not perfect joy.”
When this manner of discourse lasted for several miles, Brother Leo, who had been thinking about these sayings, asked: “Father Francis, I pray that you will teach me about perfect joy.” Saint Francis answered: “If we arrive at the Porziuncola and if we are drenched with rain and trembling with cold, covered in mud and exhausted from hunger; and if we knock on the convent gate; and if we are not recognized by the porter; and if he tells us that we are impostors who seek to deceive the world and steal from the poor; and if he refuses to open the gate; and if he leaves us outside, exposed to the rain and snow, suffering from cold and hunger; then if we embrace the injustice, cruelty, and contempt with patience, without complaining; and if we believe in faith, love, and humility that the porter knew us but was told by God to reject us, then, my dear Brother Leo, please write down and note carefully that this also is perfect joy!”
Saint Francis then said: “Brother Leo, if we knock again and if the porter drives us away with curses and blows; and if he accuses us of robbery and other crimes; and if we embrace this with patience without complaining; and if we believe in faith, love, and humility that the porter knew us but was told by God to reject us again, then, my dear Brother Leo, please write down and note carefully that this is finally perfect joy!” Saint Francis said once more: “If urged by cold and hunger, we knock again; if we call again to the porter; if we plead to him with many tears to open the gate and to give us shelter out of love for God; and if he returns more angry than ever; and if he calls us annoying rascals and beats us with a knotted stick; and if he throws us to the ground, rolls us in the snow, and beats us again with the knotted stick; and if we bear these injuries with patience without complaining; and if we think upon the sufferings of our Blessed Crucified Lord, then, most beloved Brother Leo, please write down and note carefully that this, finally, is perfect joy!”
Finally, Saint Francis said: “Brother Leo, please listen to me. Above all gifts of the Holy Spirit that Christ Jesus gives to his friends is the grace to overcome oneself, to accept willingly, out of love for Him, all contempt, all discomfort, all injury, and all suffering. In this and all other gifts, we ourselves should not boast because all things are gifts from God. Remember the words of Saint Paul: ‘What do you have that you did not receive from God? And if you did receive it, why do you boast as if it were not a gift (1 Corinthians 4:7)?’ But in the cross of afflictions and suffering, we truly can glory because as Saint Paul says again: ‘May I never boast of anything except the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by which the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world (Galatians 6:14).’ Amen.”
Conclusion
In the Eucharist, we confess the real presence of Christ, body, blood, soul, and divinity. There is in this confession a very important Christological claim, namely, that the human nature which the Son has taken to himself, really and truly belongs to him. And so, if we would draw near to Christ, we must draw near not only to Christ in his divinity (whatever that might mean) but to Christ in his humanity as well. We must embrace his body, blood, soul, and divinity. And, of course, the condition for doing so is that we ourselves be bodily. It is with good reason that there is a long and pious tradition of approaching the Eucharist with a deep bow and with the words from the Song of Songs, “May you kiss me with the kisses of your mouth” (Song 1:2).
In Francis, we come to see the particular character of this bodily embrace. Christ’s life of glory is, as Durrwell says, a perpetuation of his death, which is to say, a perpetuation of his complete self-offering to those whom he loves. In his embrace of the life that Christ lived—in the embrace of Lady poverty—Francis draws near to his own beloved—to Christ. To be accused, beaten, left in the snow, and even pierced with the wounds of the crucifixion is therefore “perfect joy,” not because these things are good in themselves, but because in bearing them, Francis is with his beloved. He is not just someone who imitates Christ; he is someone who accompanies him. The body, that “lovable and infuriating beast,” far from being an intrinsic obstacle to the spiritual life, is in fact the occasion for the full embrace of Him who has taken flesh for our sakes. The deprivation of the body through the embrace of Lady poverty, and the wounding of the body in the reception of the stigmata are, paradoxically, the moment of the body’s glorification—the glorification of brother ass.
EDITORIAL NOTE: This essay was originally delivered as a Saturdays with the Saints lecture, sponsored by the McGrath Institute for Church Life, on September 21, 2024.